Uganda

Peace studies is a growing academic field that has its scholarly roots in international relations (IR), political science, and history. All three academic disciplines consider the nation state as a primary constitutive element of the international system and central to social stability, security, and peace. This has been heavily critiqued by IR feminists (Still, 1998; Stean 1998, among others) who associate the notion of the nation state with an embedded patriarchal system that entrenches hierarchical social relations across race, class, and gender.

Who & what is the Western Cape Network? The Western Cape Network & its members are a strong, united body which coordinates and integrates organizations and individuals through advocacy, public awareness, training and support with a developmental approach in order to progressively realize women’s right to a life free from all forms of violence.

The following pages can only be described as an attempt on providing a glimpse of an insight into the vastness that is – today - defined as Gender-based Violence (GBV) and its impacts on the African landscape. The sheer size of the terrain reflects the fact that GBV seems to be a rather resilient and destructive, yet largely hidden social activity, that is firmly rooted in the existence and prevalence of patriarchal relationships of power at every level of human interaction within the historically often male-dominated societies around the globe.

It is challenging, in a way, to talk about legal feminism in Africa when the concept of “African feminism” itself is an issue of persistent contestation on the continent.   What I address myself to here are the various ways that feminists around the continent have analysed the law and the ways they have used it to pursue their struggles for gender equality and women’s human rights.   What gains have been made and what are the limitations?